Gameloft has had this off and on relationship with Android, but the fact remains they are one of the leading international publishers of video games for mobile phones (seriously, go check out their iPhone lineup). A quick visit to their official website reveals they have no dedicated section for Android games, but the company has been quietly building their Android lineup.

Polarbit became the king of 3D Android games earlier this month when they released Raging Thunder 2, but their spot at the top was short lived. Gameloft just released Asphalt 5 to the Market and we believe it places them solidly in the lead as top Android game developer.

Asphalt 5 easily has the best 3D graphics I have seen on an Android phone. The level design is second to none and the accelerometer based controls are spot on.

There is no multiplayer mode like RG2, but the single player game is one of the deepest I have seen for on Android. Replay value is off the charts with a huge garage of real cars and bikes to unlock including Audi, Ferrari, Kawasaki, Lotus, Mercedes, Mini Cooper, Nissan, and more. Each vehicle is fully customizable with upgrades, paint jobs, and decals. Users can fine tune their ride by customizing 10 different parts to boost the stats and performance.

The only downside to the game is that it pretty much requires a Motorola Droid. The Nexus One is officially supported, but the framerate is unplayable at this time. Hopefully Gameloft can push out a couple of updates which tweak the performance. Even the Droid can experience the occasional slowdown, but it is a smooth ride for the most part.

Because this is a premium title, Gameloft has attached a premium price. Asphalt 5 is currently selling for $6.99, but I think it is worth every penny. The game also weighs in at a hefty 13.6 MB and downloads additional game content to your SD card upon first load.

A quick trailer of the iPhone version of Asphalt 5 is available on Gameloft’s YouTube page and it provides a pretty good representation of what you can expect on the Droid.

Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He resides in Dallas and carries the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and HTC One as his daily devices. Ask him a question on Twitter or Google+ and he is likely to respond. | Ethics statement

Hmm weird. There were duplicate copies of the game earlier. Correct price is $6.99. The actual title is Asphalt but game description correctly calls it Asphalt 5. It looks like they have an earlier game Asphalt 3 for first gen Android phones.

I’d love to buy this… but I have an N1. Why on earth would you make a game that isn’t playable on the Android phone with the best specs? It’s great that they’ve made a solid Android game, but how on earth do they expect to make revenue through Android by making games that are only playable on a specific phone–not to mention that they are shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to customer satisfaction/relations by charging $7 for a game that wouldn’t work. Seems as though they’d be better off addressing this before releasing this app in the wild, if you ask me.

Because the droid has the better gaming hardware between the 2. The droid gpu actually support opengl 2 and its far more powerful. Really people speak of the 1ghz processor but fail to mention the weak gpu something the droid has some serious power. Its that now people are realizing how big advantage the droid got on that department with the rise of these 3D graphical beast games.

Yes I’ve read about this and I’m aware of it, however, your answer doesn’t really address the main issue of my comment. Just because a developer CAN do something, doesn’t mean they SHOULD. If they want to make money, they should develop games that are going to work across all current-gen Android devices. This isn’t some silly argument about whose phone is better, I’m making an argument about a business model.

I’m not huge on mobile gaming, but if you made something that looked acceptably nice, I’d probably guy a game or two as a diversion. They’re just losing out on revenue this way, and that’s true of any other developer who follows this MO.

There really isn’t any thing that shows the droids gpu is better than the nexus 1.
How do you know the nexus one has a weak gpu? have there been any test run or graphs posted comparing the 2? no.
Also the nexus one supports opengl es2.
The reason why the nexus one is not running as smooth is because the gpu’s for both devices have different architectures. The game was probably developed on the droid and is optimized for that process right now.

The same thing happen when exzeus came out. The game just needs to be tweaked to run on the snapdragon and it will be fine

Right, ExZeus looks and runs great on my N1. I find the controls to be a bit cumbersome and want something accelerometer-driven, which is why this interests me. Nexus One can definitely handle a game with good graphics.

Hey randy, While it is true that they do possess different architectures there is a huge differences in the chip all together. From what I’ve gather, the GPU in the droid is dedicated while the N1 isn’t this is one advantage the phone has in term of processor.

This allow the chip to run independently without bogging down main core resources which may intern lead to smoother transitions in game play.

The processors in each of those devices have trade off. More so the GPU in both phone have completely different manufacturers. I find it hard to believe that a company has repeatable as game-loft would optimize for only one of the 2 current cutting edge devices.

Even though the droid’s gpu is dedicated, you still cant conclude it’s better. Like i said, there are no benchmarks proving this.

Also spec wise, the N1′s gpu “IS” more capable. Engaget has an article up right now showing the N1 is capable of processing 22 million triangles/s while the droid is only capable of 9 million triangles/s.

As far as performance on this game is concerned… These high end games are programed in native C++ to access the GPU for the best performance. The problem is, a snapdragon may use different API’s than the powervr found in the omap(droid). A game programed (only) on the droid will perform bad on the nexus and vise versa. To get around this, the programmer must consider both processors during development and use both api’s.
Of course this requires more development, resources and time. Thats probably why game loft just released it as is. Hopefully the update it SOON!!

Overall, my point is the N1 is just as capable at games as the droid (possibly more so)

The Adreno 200 which is a rebranded AMD z430 does 22 M triangles/s, 133Mpx/s

Most 3D applications and especially OpenGL ES are fill rate limited, so the latter half of those stats is the real important number. The SGX 530 has superior fill rate over the Adreno 200. Also as mentioned in the hyperdevbox interview if it can support 3 dedicated dynamic lights and the Adreno 200 can’t that is big. I have also noticed big slow downs conceivably in render to texture or in Kwaak 3 the reflection surfaces (mirrors or teleporters) brings the N1 / Adreno 200 to it’s knees whereas the SGX 530 just chugs along fine at 30 FPS.”

This was mentioned below if you missed it. Reason behind why most 3D intensive game apps preform better on Droid vs N1.

Except you’re forgetting one important thing: the numbers you are throwing out have nothing to do with the important thing – pixel fillrate. For the fancy effects that these games use, the pixel fillrate is the more important number. Without pixel fillrate, you’d be left with blank polygons on the screen. If you are rendering blank (untextured) polygons, then yes, the Snapdragon will beat the OMAP hands down – until we start adding textures to make the polygons LOOK like something.

And even polygon rendering isn’t directly comparable, since the SXG530 uses Tile-based rendering, which is much more efficient (hidden polys aren’t rendered)

Even if that is the case this is unacceptable, they are both powerful and leading Android phones, and a company like gameloft should know how to develop for both and other upcoming Android phones. Especially when charging so much for it, when smaller devs don’t seem to have this issue. Exzeus is so much fun, and I have a UK droid/milestone. We need more, I love android hehe!

My gander is that Gameloft isn’t as concerned about as quality especially in tuning a particular game to the subtle variety of Android devices. While, yes, Gameloft has massive funding compared to most Android game devs even most commercial devs and yes they can hire artists and properly make their games look nice my general feeling is that they are more firing out a lot of games for Android that are ports from the iPhone and are simply seeing what sticks without doing all the dirty work to make sure all of their output runs the best it can for all devices it is released for whether iPhone or Android. My guess is that they are tuning for iPhone and still figuring out better Android support (one would hope), but that is not going to stop them from releasing many games for Android. Perhaps over the next year they will do better in optimizing their engine/tools to work well across the Android ecosystem; right now it’s fire and forget (and get paid regardless)…

Why should they do the extra effort when most folks consider their games to be in the A category (albeit A- category due to control and other subtle issues on Android)… Why do all the extra work now when they will release Asphalt 6 within the year (let alone revamps or continuations of all their series) perhaps with better support for Android in the future.

It seems like there is more profitability in just firing out games without doing all the grunt / dirty work to make them AAA across the Android ecosystem. They are a corporation and seemingly just care about the bottom line not in making the ultimate best quality experience.

I agree big devs are more concerned about profit than quality, tho the game looks great and runs okay I still like raging thunder a lot. I would rather they kept their AAA titles if that’s all they care about. Android is a great platform with a lot more potential, I just hope one day I have enough knowledge to make some games with my friends and add to the great Android community. The smaller devs are the more creative ones, in my opinion. I see nothing wrong with cross platform, just make it good quality for all, u know…… hope things improve.

Man you guys don’t know the half of it. This has been for sale on their WAP store since Feburary BUT guess what it didn’t work!!! make that, it would not install (I have a Moto Droid). They originally made the game so it ALL stayed on the phone’s memory.

I had to fight with them for a month before that would even admit there was a problem and that it would not install!!

Then when it first showed up in the market place last week (check the original rating comments) that version didn’t work either!!

So the long and short of it is at least the game will load up and play!!! Anyway, I will try to post a Youtube video of gameplay tonight for all you guys out there tepid on spending the princely sum of $6.99 US….Look Taylor fixed it in the write up!

Asphalt doesn’t even come close to Raging Thunder 2. I am an RG2 addict and I played Asphalt on both my Droid and my N1 and I have to say that it’s a long way off. RG2 at least tried. No support for the N1 makes Asphalt a COMPLETE fail. It is the current Android leader in terms of specs and MUST be supported before Gameloft is declared the best. As good as Asphalt is, and it is good, it just doesn’t work well enough to top the excellent RG2. And when Polarbit updates their other games, like Armageddon Squadron and Wave Blazer, for next gen Android phones, watch out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have one more race to win to beat RG2. I hope to be as addicted to Asphalt too, but as of now, it’s just not a payable game.

its really TRUE the power vr sgx 530 GPU is at least double as fast as the nexus one´s amd z430. u should read our interview with hyperdevbox on droidblog.net. carlo the main programer of the exzeus makers confirmed it.

there are different datasheets on both gpus on the net. but it´s fact that the power vr is simply faster.

The Adreno 200 which is a rebranded AMD z430 does 22 M triangles/s, 133Mpx/s

Most 3D applications and especially OpenGL ES are fill rate limited, so the latter half of those stats is the real important number. The SGX 530 has superior fill rate over the Adreno 200. Also as mentioned in the hyperdevbox interview if it can support 3 dedicated dynamic lights and the Adreno 200 can’t that is big. I have also noticed big slow downs conceivably in render to texture or in Kwaak 3 the reflection surfaces (mirrors or teleporters) brings the N1 / Adreno 200 to it’s knees whereas the SGX 530 just chugs along fine at 30 FPS.

So while it may not push as many triangles per second the fill rate is superior and also quite likely support for lighting and even better extension support/implementation is what makes it faster.

you guys are SO funny :)
90% of you are just geeks, knowing just nothing about game development, reading data sheets found somewhere on the web and believing that game industry is an utopic world where you can spend 1 year developing a game with no guarantees that it will sell.
Why Gameloft (and EA, and so many others) is focusing on iPhone ? because it sells a lot more, because there are 50 M+ iPhone out there, because there is only one device, one configuration and one screen size to support and that makes things A LOT easier to develop.
Why Gameloft (and EA, and so many others) is not focusing on Android (yet?) ? because the good devices are still very new, because you have to support all the devices, from the cheapest to the better (marketplace doesnt allow you to publish device’ specific applications, that’s the main problem for Google right now), all the screen sizes, all the configurations, all the chipsets, etc… which is way harder than only one, and because android users arent so willing to pay 7dlls for a game (instead of iphone users).
That said, i confirm that the Nexus One, despite of his specs, is not so good to do games (CPU/GPU connection is in cause).
So what will you get with your comments? just nothing, no more support from Gameloft, neither from EA, neither from other big publishers. So just let them time to learn, see the results and maybe think in future games. In the meanwhile, i’m greatful to gameloft to be the first releasing an iPhone port for Android.

@Name (required)
>”That said, i confirm that the Nexus One, despite of his specs, is not so good to do games (CPU/GPU connection is in cause).”

Ahh, ok.. was that so hard? ;P The one spec you cling to though is inconsequential… :)

And your terminology is wrong.. geeks know what they are talking about and dorks don’t. Dorks just go for nerd style, but are teh dumb. ;P

The Snapdragon CPU is better than the OMAP3430 CPU, but the 1st gen Snapdragon is paired with an under performing GPU and the OMAP3 has a better pairing. I’ve commented on A&M before that it will be interesting to see if Qualcomm will keep up over the coming year or so on the GPU side. Hopefully they pair a better GPU with their first dual core Snapdragon processor due out towards the end of the year. Unfortunately Qualcomm out of circumstance since buying the AMD mobile GPU division kind of has to eat their own dogfood and not pair their CPU with anyones GPU (or the best one). Often it’s the weakest link that creates the bottleneck and for 3D apps that is the GPU…

@Randy (up there in the comments a bit)
>”The problem is, a snapdragon may use different API’s than the powervr found in the omap(droid). A game programed (only) on the droid will perform bad on the nexus and vise versa. To get around this, the programmer must consider both processors during development and use both api’s.”

There aren’t serious differences in core OpenGL support across the SGX 530 and Adreno 200.

Regarding extension support which is how OpenGL is able to be extended for processor specific implementation and for new functionality that has yet to make it into the core specification indeed the SGX 530 supports more core OES extensions (standardized extensions). There are differences with texture compression extensions between the two, but again one doesn’t need to use them.

It’s not that there are differences in the OpenGL support necessarily as if you are a developer trying to make a cross platform (cross GPU) real time app or game you try and stick to just the basic GL API and if necessary the least amount of extensions possible.

So this whole graphics performance thing really is coming down to the GPU performance itself and not so much API / extension differences between the two GPUs. If there were incompatibilities at that level the app/game simply wouldn’t run at all.

The fact that the iPhone uses the same manufacturer/class of GPU as the Droid does obviously benefit the Droid over the N1 if any of those devs porting from the iPhone did use particular or more exotic extensions.

Other areas that are more of a nuisance are input control constraints across the Android ecosystem, but that isn’t horribly bad to work out.

And for the record… I’ve been working on middleware for Android for real time app & game dev in Java since the G1 hit my hands 10/08 and I’ve yet to make a release after 16 months full time dev though I’m determined to do so in May with closed beta soon. :) There have been ups & downs along the way and many many headaches over fragmentation and rushed/incomplete OS releases (2.0!).
Of course another big aspect of my work is that it is not just cross platform between the Android ecosystem, but also desktop OpenGL development. I’ve got a reasonably serious GL 3D engine that runs from one shared source base (~98% shared) that runs across the desktop (wide variety of GPUs from the last 10 years) and all Android devices with no problems on the OpenGL front.

Things regarding Android have been much more stable since 2.0.1 / mid December That really is just 4 months ago since Android became more stable for the next gen devices only though that is until more 1.x devices get updated to 2.1+.

@Name (required)
>”So what will you get with your comments? just nothing, no more support from Gameloft, neither from EA, neither from other big publishers. So just let them time to learn, see the results and maybe think in future games.”

Heh. …Doesn’t change them from being money grubbing big corporations who will throw out incomplete work and charge a mint for it then deny problems in support as Gertman and other above have claimed.

It’s fine to discuss the merits of different technology between Android devices.. I never expected this blog post comment thread to lead to more support from a corporation.
But it is nice to perhaps consider that the Android community is reasonably more informed and there are folks interested in understanding how technical limitations affect user experience.

To back up my claim about the game simply needing optimizations for the snapdragon processor.

Today an update was pushed out and the performance is almost perfect on the N1 now. I don’t have a droid to compare the performance but so far it plays 98% better than before.

From this it’s pretty clear that the performance issue (for this game) has little to do with the abilities of the snapdragon GPU.

For instance, for a while (probably even now) Toonwars plays(ed) better on my g1 than the N1. This doesn’t mean the g1 has a better GPU

About the processor debate. It’s kind over hard to say which one is better without any real world bench mark test.
As shown by the PC market, some games play better on certain GPU’s than others(crysis) when theoretically one was better than the other.

Whether one gpu is better than the other(N1 or droid), i still don’t believe there is a mobile game out yet that can max the full potentials of both GPU’s yet. I believe the only bottle neck right now is the coding itself.

@Randy
>Today an update was pushed out and the performance is almost perfect on the N1 now. I don’t have a droid to compare the performance but so far it plays 98% better than before.

Cool.. As long as they are continuing to push out updates and make an attempt to support the larger Android ecosystem when charging premium prices then things look better regarding Gameloft’s efforts.

>From this it’s pretty clear that the performance issue (for this game) has little to do with the abilities of the snapdragon GPU.

Sort of.. If you need a different code path because of a GPU incompatibility that is a constraint of the GPU.

>I believe the only bottle neck right now is the coding itself.

Yes.. In general this is the case. A year or so from now as long as GPU variation doesn’t grow a ton increased stability should come to graphics intensive apps & games across the Android ecosystem.

I just want to see companies and individuals who charge a premium price support and maintain their efforts across the Android ecosystem and not try and make a buck on devices where their work is less than stellar.

I just wanted to point out that I have updated my Nexus One to Cyanogenmod 5.0.6 and this game runs much smoother now. I’d say anywhere from 5-15 fps increase at times. Much more playable and shows that software still might be able to help the gpu in this phone even if it has a weaker fill rate than the power vr chipset.

basically it seems the snapdragon cpu is much faster than a8 cortex? powervr creates slower, but fills faster than z430? for opengl? ……how many opengl apps are out there for android?

i had a droid for 24 days…processor seemed laggy, slow for overall phone functions…programs opened slowly, browsing was ok, but lagged somewhat. games were pretty fast, but thats what i have a psp for :-P .

htc incredible came out, returned the droid (keyboard is completely useless by the way) … liked the feel of the droid tho…love the screen on the incredible tho.

incredible screams through everything. i also have not noticed any difference in graphics performance between the raging thunder game…some other racing game, and some other water racing game i had on droid, and the performance from the incredible.

that said, if the graphics card flies (powervr), but the processor is slower (550mhz a8) it doesn’t really seem to do much for you. similarly, if the processor (1ghz 8650) is faster than the graphics (z430), that doesn’t seem as bad to me. most average use, everyday apps that the majority of android users buy and use, and that companies concentrate on to make money off of don’t even use the graphics cards that frequently.

not to say this won’t be the case in the future. but 133m px/s is pretty fast. me thinks that many people won’t really NEED to take advantage of the powervr chip in the droid until much much later in game/app development.

finally, i am not a programmer, game developer, etc. i simply build computers and networks. droid is a great phone…..PHONE, not handheld game machine, or video player, its a great PHONE…cause its supposed to be a PHONE….the htc incredible is easily 10x faster overall for most apps. both are great phones. u want a blazing fast gaming machine? buy a video game system :P :) … happy friday!

[...] Box WordPress PluginGameloft first demonstrated what they could do on Android with their hit racer Asphalt 5 and now the company is back with a full stable of 3D games. Android fans can now enjoy envy 10 new [...]

To dispell all rumors, on recent benchmarks, we see the Nexus One is about half as fast as a Droid. The graphics chip on the droid is simply much much better. The Nexus One’s Ati graphics chip has a faster triangle rate but a slower fill rate which most games use more.

For example, the Galaxy S line of phones has a GPU that benchmarks say is ATLEAST twice as better as the one in the Droid, peaking out at over three times better.

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